Perfectionism

מאת ר' ש. קאפלין שליט"א

Perfectionism is widespread in our society and communities. One reason is the חינוך we received: we were taught that we must score 100% in our exams and sometimes were told be the best. This expectation can foster the belief that we must be perfect. The unhappiness and lack of enjoyment we see in perfectionists show perfectionism is not a good מידה and that this change. הקב"ה wants us to enjoy our lives, not live under the pressure of having to be perfect. Only הקב"ה is perfect; no created being can be perfect as the דרך ה' writes. When we believe we must be perfect, the fear of failure or falling short of our goals that mindset must often prevents us from even beginning or even trying. What really counts is the effort, the רצון, willpower.

אברהם אבינו

The פרשה begins with אברהם אבינו purchasing מערת המכפילה. Buying it from the בני חת and עפרון was a struggle, but he ultimately succeeded.

Later, we read about אברהם אבינו sending אליעזר to search for a שידוך

too, was challenging, but his efforts ended in success.

When we think of אברהם אבינו, we recall the stories from last week’s סדרה more. We remember his remarkable אורחים and the great effort he made for his guests. We also think of the עקידה.

for יצחק. This,

הכנסת

“You deserve three sweets, you tried three times to answer a question, that amazing”

Perhaps we recall his concern for סדום and the many תפילות he offered to save it from destruction. Yet we know that his guests were מלאכים and did not need הכנסת אורחים in the usual sense. Nevertheless, אברהם was rewarded for every bit of effort he put into this מעשה חסד, as רש"י explains there. He Davened for סדום and did not succeed yet he was rewarded for the effort. אברהם was stopped just before he could shecht intended to offer was never carried out. Yet חז"ל tell us that we continue to benefit from the זכות העקידה to this day. We think about אברהם אבינו with his הכנסת אורחים and the עקידה yet the truth was that there was no הכנסת אורחים and no עקידה. We see very clearly in the תורה that it is about the effort and how much we try.

יצחק, so the sacrifice he had

Trying your best

There is a משגיח in ארץ ישראל called R’ Mandelbaum שליט''א who was משגיח in the ישיבה of ר' צבי קושלעבסקי שליט"א until a few years ago. I heard this story from a friend of mine who heard this from R’ Mendelbaum himself.

An unexpected visit

A family in בני ברק had a son who had, nebech, gone off the דרך. For three years, he had not observed שבת or even יום .כיפור His father had a weekly learning קביעות with ר' אהרן לייב שטיינמן זצ"ל. One day, without much thought, he asked his son, “Would you like to come with me?” To his surprise, the boy agreed. The boy accompanied his father to ר' אהרן לייב. After the half-hour learning session, ר' אהרן לייב turned to him and gently asked, “How many years have you not been frum?” “Three years,” the boy replied.

The value of forty minutes

“During those three years,” ר' אהרן לייב asked, “did you ever think about doing תשובה or returning to Yiddishkeit?” The boy paused to think. “Twice, for about twenty minutes each,” he said. ר' אהרן לייב responded warmly: “Wow! That means you had forty minutes of הרהורי תשובה! Do you know what that means in שמים? Do you realize what an achievement that is?” He made the boy feel good about those moments and continued to emphasize their value:

“Don’t think you won’t be rewarded. You will receive a tremendous reward for those forty minutes.” The boy came home and that day was a change in his life he started keeping some מצות, after a few months he was fully religious again.

A lasting childhood memory

His father asked him, “When I invited you to visit ר' אהרן לייב, you weren’t keeping any מצוו ת . What made you so eager to come with me and see the גדול ?”הדור The boy gave a remarkable answer: “When I was twelve, our class finished a פרק of גמרא, and the school invited ר' אהרן לייב to test us. He asked each boy a question and gave him a sweet when he answered. I was nervous when my turn came because I struggled to understand the גמרא. “He asked me a question, and although I tried, I couldn’t answer, he then asked another question I tried again, but my answer was wrong. When he asked a third time, I closed my eyes and thought hard, yet still didn’t know the answer. “Then ר' אהרן לייב took three sweets from his bag and said, ‘You deserve three sweets. You tried three times to answer, and that is amazing.’” “What experience encouragement. He made me feel so good, and I will never forget it. “That is why, when you invited me to visit ר' אהרן לייב זצ''ל , I wanted to see him again.” could have became been a a moment bitter of

Valuing effort and keeping hope

This beautiful story highlights both the power of חינוך and the importance of effort. What matters is that we try, not merely that we succeed. ,להבדיל the words of Winston in Churchill: “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” The lesson is clear: when we fail, we must not lose hope.

The idea of mistakes

We say in the ברכה of בורא נפשות so often, "רבות וחסרונן", we thank Hashem for the חסרונות. Is the fact we are created imperfect a ברכה? The חפץ חיים explains: a person is imperfect and that is part of life, and because of this a person is not limited from trying, חז"ל are telling us that this is a ברכה, because it makes a person try and grow, that is a ברכה. If a person will feel that he must be perfect and finish the job and be a perfect human being he won’t bother starting, הוא היה אומר לא עליך המלאכה לגמור, the fact that הקב"ה created us with חסרונ ות gives us the חשק and desire to try. The חפץ חיים adds, if everyone would be perfect we wouldn’t need each other, we get so many זכותים from helping each other, every person can help so many people in different ways because every person is different, what one person has a different person doesn’t have, whether it’s money or different מעלות in other areas, because we all have חסרונות and we can help each other we get so much merit, בורא נפשות רבות וחסרונן enables us to get merit, if we would be perfect there will be no חסד. The פסוק writes משיח ,"ושביה בצדקה" will come through צדקה, if everyone will be perfect there won’t be any room for צדקה to give us the merit for משיח. Everyone is created with their own nature and as we have mentioned in the past that our nature cannot be changed, the nature must be channeled². We must accept who we are. When we accept the possibility of failure, we give ourselves the freedom to try. But if we insist on being perfect, completing everything, and being the best, we may give up before we even begin.

Learning from mistakes

Mistakes are a necessary part of the journey of life. They become productive when we learn from them. The only person who never makes mistakes is someone who has stopped growing. By staying within his comfort zone remains stagnant rather than developing through them. Avoiding challenges and staying within our comfort zone may seem easier than continuing to grow. Yet when we stop growing, we can feel emotionally and spiritually low, with little sense of fulfilment. We must accept that we can make mistakes. Many great inventions and discoveries came as a result of mistakes. Penicillin made by Alexender Fleming was discovered by the fact that he wasn’t and avoiding challenges, he perfectly clean and tidy, he had gone on vacation and when we returned to the laboratory, he found bacteria all over the place, there was one spot that had no bacteria and that was an area of mold that he had not cleaned up before he went away. He made his investigations and found out that mold can stop bacteria, he made penicillin which has saved millions of lives in the last one hundred years. Mistakes can enable us to achieve and discover.

Turning mistakes into growth

Looking back, we may see that past mistakes taught us important lessons that later led to success. Every opportunity for something positive. A poor strengthen a person’s אמונה וביטחון by reminding him that הקב"ה is in control of his פרנסה. The תרגום on the כי הוא הנותן לך כח “ פסוק לעשות חיל” explains that הקב"ה gives a person the ideas for what to invest in. Sometimes an investment brings profit; sometimes it brings a loss. Even a loss mistake can become an investment, for example, can can strengthen a person’s אמונה וביטחון. In this way, mistakes can become a positive experiences. Accepting our mistakes gives us the כח to keep going.

Accepting mistakes

When we cannot accept our own mistakes, we may also struggle to accept the mistakes of others. This can be especially damaging in marriage or when working with other people.

A forgotten wallet

I know a couple who took a day trip to the Lake District the day after their שבע ברכות. They rented a car and drove for two hours to Lake Windermere, hoping to go boating. As they queued to rent a boat, the חתן reached into his pocket and realized he had forgotten his wallet. After travelling all that way, he was understandably embarrassed. The כלה burst out laughing, finding the situation so amusing that he soon joined in. Together, they joked about how they would get home without money for petrol.

What could have spoiled their outing became a shared joke, and they still had a wonderful day. Imagine if she had been a perfectionist. Instead of laughing, she might have thought, “Oh no! What a foolish man I married! How could he forget his wallet?” Even if she had not voiced those thoughts so early in their marriage, her reaction would have been very different. Being unable to go boating as planned could have created tension rather than laughter—hardly building their relationship. A person who cannot accept that he can make a mistake and is a perfectionist, cannot accept other people making a mistake. It’s not good for a marriage or any social setting. When a person cannot accept making a mistake it’s not just one negative event that happened, if a person doesn’t accept his mistake it’s a daily and hourly recurring himself, and it makes future mistakes look frightening, it will stop a person going out of his comfort zone. Some time ago a בחור davened for the first time קבלת שבת for the עמוד on שבת. I a helpful start to negative thought about happened to learn with him a few days later and I said to him, “Didn’t you daven something on Shabbos? I already forgot what you davened…” He said to me, “I davened קבלת שבת and I’m not doing it again…” I asked him, “Why not?” He said to me, “Look, I made so many mistakes, the tune was wrong, I made so many mistakes on the words because I was so nervous.” I had forgotten and I’m sure everybody else had forgotten it. I told him, “So you made a few mistakes! Next time you will make less mistakes! Don’t say you’re not davening again… I want you to daven before חנוכה again…” He said to me that was still too close, so I said, “so daven before ראש חודש שבט…” This happens in life the whole time, you try again, learn from the mistakes and the next time you are successful.

Don’t get stuck with the mistakes

We must learn from the mistakes and then next time we wont make the same mistake, and if we make a bad mistake and somebody is hurt or injured we must apologies, compensate them, but it shouldn’t be something we dwell on the rest of our lives. I remember a car crash which happened many years ago, the driver never recovered, not because he was hurt, but because others were hurt, he couldn’t function anymore, his whole mind was focused on that mistake. He never moved forward this fellow, one negative event became a major part of his life. A איד’s “battle cry” is to move on, not to dwell on the past and focus on mistakes for the rest of our lives, do תשובה on יום כיפור , but it shouldn’t occupy our brains the whole time. A perfectionist gets stuck in that pit, he can’t move on, and the fear of making a mistake stops a person from moving forward in life.

Life moves on

As we grow older, our responsibilities increase—a particular challenge for a perfectionist. A newly married couple may be able to put everything away neatly each night. But as children arrive, life becomes busier, with rotas to manage, nappies homework to help with. Maintaining the same household standards as in the early days of marriage may no longer be possible. to change, and

A perfectionist often overlooks how circumstances changed. Insisting on completing every item on a mental to-do list can push bedtime later and later, leaving us unable to Perfectionism taskmaster, draining our energy and weighing us down. As responsibilities grow, we must accept that some tasks will have to wait. Just as we stop what we are doing when שבת begins, we need a set time to go to bed. Tonight, that may mean leaving the ספרים on the table, dishes unwashed or the floor uncleaned, even if we usually finish those jobs. We must understand that life is not about a to-do list, we must do what must be done, try our best and often we simply can’t accomplish everything. If we don’t accept this then life is going to drive us crazy. Look how much I have done today, I did so much today! Look at the accomplishments, don’t look at what I haven’t done, a perfectionist always dwells on what hasn’t been done, and that’s person’s שמחת החיים and leaves a person in a state where he can’t bother starting and workloads have function well the becomes next a day. cruel depressing which wrecks a because he believes if I cannot finish then there is no point starting. It’s a mindset which we must change, it’s a mindset which can come from a גאוה to want to be perfect, people want others to think they are perfect and that stops perfectionism drives a person nowhere and it’s so prevalent in our circles, we must eradicate this out of our mindset, only הקב"ה is perfect, everything created is imperfect as the דרך השם writes at length. And the main proof that הקב"ה doesn’t want us to be like this is because we see that perfectionists are not happy in life, they are depressed people and הקב"ה wants us to be happy people. We must remind ourselves constantly that perfectionism is impossible, if a person tries to be perfect in his day so much energy will be put in to achieve being perfect, this will take away from your energy to complete other things. We must remind ourselves constantly that perfectionism is impossible, I can a person from growth, try my best, I can set goals, I want to head towards the goals, but I might make mistakes along the way, I can’t be perfect. It’s also important to acknowledge that this is not a good מידה, it’s a false mindset, perfectionism doesn’t help us. It’s very hard to see oneself in the mirror, if perfectionism, it’s hard for the person himself to see what he looks like, we must find someone who we feel they are a perfectionist and just observe their behavior, you will see there is tension and pressure in their life and people don’t like being around such people. We pressure and tension, but go find it on somebody else and you will see then what you yourself look like too. It’s interesting to find old people who struggle with perfectionism, the mindset doesn’t go away unless you make an effort for it to go away, it doesn’t go by itself, it needs effort, and the work starts now, not next year or in two years. one is suffering from don’t always notice our own

¹ See פרשת וירא Volume 2 where we spoke about this ענין 1

² See תולדות Volume 2 4